A basketball coach who once worked at two schools in the Santa Clarita Valley is scheduled to be arraigned next week on 15 sex crimes, including six counts of committing a lewd act upon a child, after he was held to answer for the charges filed against him.
Jeremy Andre Haggerty, 34, appeared Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court for a preliminary hearing.
During a preliminary hearing, prosecutors present evidence in the case, and the defense can respond; the judge can then decide if the case should go to trial.
Following the day-long hearing Friday, Haggerty was held to answer to the 14 criminal charges filed against him plus a 15th charge introduced in court Friday.
Haggerty faces eight counts of sexual battery, six counts of lewd act upon a child and one count of possession of child pornography, according to the amended complaint.
He is scheduled to be arraigned on all charges Friday, Feb. 22, said Ricardo Santiago, spokesman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
Sgt. Brian Hudson of the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department Special Victims Unit said at a news conference in September that detectives identified victims “going back as far as 2008.”
At the time of his arrest, Haggerty was living in Orange County and working at a school there. In the Santa Clarita Valley, he worked at two schools as a basketball coach.
He is accused of sexually assaulting nine victims over the course of nearly a decade, who ranged in age between 14 and 17 years old.
If convicted as charged, he faces up to 14 years in state prison.
Detectives said in September that they found no evidence the alleged incidents occurred on a local school campus, and all of the alleged incidents reportedly took place in one-on-one training sessions involving the coach and the player-victim.
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